


and in this pool of blood i'll meet your eyes

by blackwood (transjon)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Apocalypse, Archivist!Jon, Codependency, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Love, M/M, Nonconsensual Compulsion, Possessive Behavior, Unreliable Narrator, Vampire Martin, discussion of suicide by proxy, monster bfs, post 160, self destructive behavior
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:08:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23528917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/transjon/pseuds/blackwood
Summary: “Please,” Martin whispers into the fabric of Jon’s trousers. It doesn’t sound like he has much faith in his prayers anymore. Jon hates to be his malevolent god.“You know I’m not going to kill you,” he says.“I know,” Martin says, and he sounds so sad and defeated that for a moment Jon thinks he would do anything for him that he asked for. Anything at all.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 26
Kudos: 204





	and in this pool of blood i'll meet your eyes

**Author's Note:**

> the title is from demolition lovers by mcr
> 
> idk yall i think tma vampires are very unsexy. martin will instead be a sexy vampire. 
> 
> theres some self harm and relatively lot of like, violence? graphic stuff? idk. there's also a lot of like 'this is for their own good' type of thinking thats not necessarily very uh, healthy, or good? 
> 
> not sure why im so obsessed w/ monster jon and monster martin lately, but i can have some as a threat

Jon is only distracted for a few minutes. That’s all it takes.

–

Tea. They’re out of tea. They’ve been out of tea, weeks now, not that they’d needed it to begin with – not anymore, where drinking the tea Martin would make had been secondary to holding the warm cup in their hands, where they’d held a mug in their hands until they forgot what they were doing it for – but Martin, Martin needs tea. Martin needs to make tea. Or he doesn’t, it’s not like he has some kind of a strange obsession with it, just –

Tea is easy. Tea is universal. Tea is a love language. 

And Martin needs tea because he needs caretaking because he needs love. 

–

The door slams shut and it takes Jon too long to understand what it means. 

–

Outside, the Eye casts its monstrous pupil upon him. Jon doesn’t bother to look back. 

“Martin,” he screams, and the empty, hollow world around him returns it to him as an echo. In the lonely it’d been quiet, almost comforting in its softness. Here it’s louder than what’s normal. Nothing quiet or comforting about it. _Martin, Martin, Martin_. “Come back.” _Come back, come back, come back_. It gets louder every echo. 

The village is gone. Everything is gone. The grass and the road and the houses (not theirs, though – not the little cabin, or Martin’s old beater of a car, or the shed out back) all gone, and now Martin as well.

(And there’s the sound of screaming – not anyone nearby, not anyone real, just the knowledge that there is screaming, and people have been hurt, and that there are _things_ to know and examine and pick apart and inhale, and Jon’s blood thrums with it –)

He doesn't start running on purpose, or consciously, but eventually everything around him becomes a blur. He couldn’t have gone far, could he? Time works differently now. Maybe it’s been hours. Maybe it’s been minutes. He prays it’s only been minutes, and above him the eye winks. 

On the dirt path towards what remains of the village is a hunched over shape. There’s blood on the ground around it. Jon slows down. Something’s ringing alarm bells at the back of his mind. Blood. Blood. Blood. 

“Martin,” Jon exhales, “no. No.”

“Jon?” says the shape in Martin’s voice. No, it’s – it’s Martin. It’s Martin, and he’s hurt, and then Jon’s running again, full speed until he’s almost too close to stop safely. 

“Martin,” he says, and it feels like the word’s been ripped out of him. “Thank God. Are you hurt?”

“No,” says Martin, examining his own hands. “I’m alright.”

“Okay,” Jon says, and pushes some of the panic down. “Okay. Okay, okay, okay.”

“Okay,” Martin repeats, almost like a dog. Obedient. No, he’s – not obedient. It’s just that it’s the right thing to say. Right? 

“You shouldn’t have –”

“I know. I just thought –”

They lock eyes for a second, and Martin looks so –

Not upset. Tired. A little shaky. Dazed. There’s a look in his eyes, and something thrums at the back of Jon’s head, a need to _know_ , a need to –

“I thought we needed tea,” Martin finishes the thought. Quiet. Defeated. Jon could cry.

“Let’s go back,” Jon says, and extends a hand. Martin grabs it and pulls himself up by it. His hands don’t shake, and Jon tries to still his own as well. 

“Yeah,” Martin says, “let’s go back. Good idea.”

–

Martin had said he wasn’t hurt but there was blood so Jon looks over him anyway, worried and on edge (maybe they’d put a bullet in him – another ghost bullet, maybe –, or maybe they’d stabbed him with something, spider fangs, venom –) but he looks fine. Untouched. No scrapes or wounds or punctures. 

“All good?” Martin asks nervously. 

“Yeah,” Jon says around the stubborn lump in his throat, “all good.”

All good. He’s all good. 

–

Martin sleeps by his side and dreams and in his dreams he sobs and twitches and Jon lies wide awake and thinks:

Where did the blood come from?

–

Maybe his eyes get darker. Maybe his teeth look sharper. Jon couldn’t tell. It’s probably nothing. 

–

Jon nails the door shut. Martin sits on the sofa and watches him do it, holding a mug in his hand. Nothing in it. Just the comfort of it. Guess there’s still some comforts with relatively low risk to them. 

(Does that mean anything? In a world where nothing is safe does relative safety mean anything? Martin holds his mug in his hand and it’s safer than some other things, like running out the door or holding a knife to his throat. Is that safe? Does it mean anything?)

After he’s done he kisses Martin on the mouth and Martin kisses him back. Normal. Just like he always does. Jon licks into his mouth and Martin giggles, finally, and Jon thinks, _this is the sign I was looking for. He’s okay._

–

And then –

Martin standing in the bathroom staring at his own face in the mirror. 

“My teeth,” he says. “Jon.”

Jon comes in to look. The bathroom floor is cool and slick (and it shouldn’t be, right?). Martin opens his mouth obediently when he cups Martin’s jaw in his hand, and in his soft, pink mouth his canines have gotten longer, ever so slightly.

“Yeah?” Jon asks. 

“They’re not right,” Martin says weakly. Jon guides his mouth back shut gently with his hand and his jaw clicks shut with an audible noise. Martin winces. 

“They’re yours,” Jon says softly.

“What?”

Jon thumbs at Martin’s cheek, gentle pressure to feel his teeth through the skin and the tissue. “So they’re right. Everything about you is right.”

And it makes sense, right? Nothing is right, here. Nothing is what it should be. It only makes sense for this to not make sense, in a way. If it’s Martin it’s okay. 

–

But they don’t stop growing. And then it’s – 

Martin, staring out the window with empty eyes. Outside there’s nothing. 

“What’s wrong?” Jon asks. Martin turns around to look at him, mechanical and sharp and just barely wrong. 

“I don’t know,” he says. “Hungry.”

On his long, long canines there is blood, and Jon finally notices that Martin’s bitten through his own lip. 

–

Jon’s not hungry. Not for food, at least. Martin shouldn’t be either.

–

Martin stops sleeping.

–

“Are we safe here?” Martin asks. 

They’re not. It feels like Martin getting lured away and disappearing for what felt like years was just a short time ago. Like it was yesterday. Like the panicked chase and heart-drop fear was just an hour ago, two hours ago, like he just got back, like he’d just carried Martin’s body in and –

He hadn’t carried Martin, he reminds himself. Martin hadn’t been hurt. He’d walked in himself. They’d held hands all the way back.

“Yes,” he says anyway. “We’re safe.”

Martin is quiet for a long time. “Don’t lie to me,” he says finally, quietly. On his sharp teeth Jon can almost see his reflection, and he wonders when his eyes got bright enough to emit light.

–

“In the lonely,” Martin says quietly, “my worst fear was someone making me feel something.”

Jon hums questioningly. Martin shifts so that he can lay his head on Jon’s shoulder.

“But you made me feel something, and it wasn’t scary. And,” Martin takes a breath, “I thought I needed to be alone to be safe. But I think the only way for me to be safe is with you.”

And there’s a thing in Jon’s chest, something alive and alight and furious, something that makes him want to bite Martin or eat him or _something_ , something ferociously protective, something that _needs_ him to be close and there and present and always with him. Something alive enough to almost be sentient. Something that’s almost something more than an extension of himself. Something about to crawl out of his mouth and slither away from him. Something ready to wrap itself around Martin’s throat like a chain link collar. 

“I love you,” Jon says. It’s all he can think of to say in response. It’s everything.

–

Martin’s fine. Martin’s perfect. Martin’s everything, and he’s so sweet and gentle with Jon, and Jon asks, bashfully, “will you kiss me?” and Martin takes his head in his hands, hands closing around the back of his skull, and his mouth is so soft and warm and good and Jon would like to live in it, he would, he’d like to climb inside of it and become a part of him. He thinks that’s better than taking Martin and making him a part of Jon. Less selfish. Jon could use to be less selfish. 

Martin’s the only thing that’s still real. He doesn’t sleep anymore. Jon’s glad, because sleeping had looked like it’d hurt anyway, and he likes having him all hours of the day, or, all hours of not-day, or, all of the –

Time doesn’t exist but every undefinable moment of Jon’s conscious existence he wants to spend with Martin. 

They still spend some time of the day in the bed – it’s warm and soft and feels safe, the same way it feels safe to lie together, tangled up, even if Martin won’t do it for as long at a time as Jon would like him to (– and wouldn’t it be so good to just stay there forever? In this cocoon of relative safety? Outside the howls keep getting louder again and Jon thinks this time Martin might hear them as well. He sits by the window and listens, and Jon sits next to him and listens as well, and sometimes Martin opens his mouth and his jaw cracks quietly, because his teeth have a hard time fitting in his mouth now, and Jon leans his body against Martin’s) because he wants to go, he thinks this can’t last and Jon thinks –

Jon thinks this can last as long as they make it. As long as they want. There’s nothing left for whatever’s still out there to lose, and in here it’s good. It’s so goddamn good. It’s quiet. It’s safe. And Martin –

–

Martin sleeps again, just a few nights, and when he wakes up the last time his eyes are yellow and empty.

–

(Outside, he’d been pale and weak and he’d said he was fine. Underneath him there’d been a puddle of already drying thick blood. You’re okay, Jon’d said, you’re okay. He’d walked home. Jon’d let him lean on him, and he’d walked home fine.)

–

He says it hurts. 

Jon’s getting used to that himself. The new eyes he’s growing on his body aren’t exactly painless either. They follow Martin around when he walks around the cabin wall to wall like a trapped animal and Jon says “sorry, sorry, sorry” which bleeds into a staticky whine against his will.

It’s too much input. There’s too much. He’d thought he’d wanted to know. He still does. He stares at him out of all of his eyes and Martin looks perfect out of each one of them. Soft and lovely and sweet and kind. 

And he says it hurts. _It_ isn’t ever anything he names, just – the thing that hurts. Something. Jon asks and Martin turns his head away and Jon’s eyes follow him and the static rises. 

“Tell me,” Jon says, “what’s wrong?”

Martin closes his eyes and sobs. His fingers clench, unclench, clench again. “I want to –”

He cuts himself off. Opens his mouth. Closes it. He shakes his head slowly, and then there’s tears dripping down his face like out of a leaky faucet. Drip drip drip. Tear duct to cheek to chin to couch. Jon watches them disappear into the fabric.

“ _Martin_.”

“Please make me,” Martin says. “Make me. Please.”

So Jon does. 

–

(Visions of blood, and hunger, and bodies and flesh and _hunger_ and death, and Martin’s quiet, heaving sobs afterwards, and Jon holds him close enough that his sobs are muffled against his chest.)

–

And he’s still perfect –

–

(“Say you’re okay. Martin. _Martin_ , say you’re okay.”

He’s too weak to tilt his head to look up at him. Jon kneels on the wet ground by his head and cups his head in his hands. “You’re okay. Okay? You’re alright. You’re not hurt.”

“I’m not hurt,” Martin repeats back obediently. His words slur a little bit. Jon’s hands are shaking but not badly enough to make Martin’s head move with it.

“Good,” Jon exhales. “Good. I love you.”

“I love you,” Martin repeats back, and he looks so exhausted, suddenly, that Jon’s scared he’s going to pass out, or –

“Hey, hey, hey, Martin,” he says, and panic isn’t quite – panic _is_ creeping into his voice, fast. Martin hums quietly.

“I’m going to pick you up, alright?”

“Okay,” Martin says quietly. “Okay.”)

–

“Kill me,” Martin begs. “Please. Before I hurt someone.”

“No,” Jon says. “No. No.”

Martin makes a dash for the front door, but Jon is faster. He slams his own back against the wood and Martin crumbles onto the floor immediately. “Please,” he says, “please, please, please…”

“No,” Jon says. Martin crawls towards him on his hands and knees, and when he gets close enough to touch he grabs a fistful of Jon’s trouser leg and starts crying in earnest. 

“I love you,” Jon says, helplessly, “I love you. I love you.”

And Martin, pressing his face into Jon’s leg, sobs “please let me die.”

–

In this wasteland there is nobody left for Martin to hurt. Nobody except for Jon.

–

How can he ask Jon to do this, then? To kill him so he won’t kill Jon? As if that’s something Jon could ever do? As if he wouldn’t sooner die than kill Martin? 

–

As if Jon can still die?

–

If you’d asked him, just a few years ago, wouldn’t he have said the same? Wouldn’t he have rather died than hurt anyone? And yet he’s still here, and yet he doesn’t want to die – and he knows Martin won’t either, soon enough. Martin –

–

Martin’s always been strong enough to get through anything. Jon knows him. He knows him better than he ever dreamed he would. He asks him and Martin tells him obediently and Jon watches him and _Knows_ and Martin doesn’t even know all these things about himself but Jon does. 

–

(and Jon thinks – if he was really serious about it, wouldn’t he try to kill himself?)

–

Martin’s sweaters. His mugs. They’ve got all these cat mugs in the cupboards that Martin’d brought – figures he’d thought tea mugs were important enough to lug all the way from London, as if Daisy wouldn’t have any cups at her cabin – when they’d first come. Martin sits in Jon’s lap and kisses him, and Jon kisses back and his heart beats irregular and fast. 

“I love you,” he says. 

“I love you,” Martin says. Martin with his vacant eyes. Martin with his shaky hands. Jon gives him a little kiss on the forehead and Martin leans into it, automatic. 

“I love you,” he says again, just to make sure. 

Martin’s quiet for a bit. “I know,” he says, then, “I love you too.”

–

“Kill me,” Martin says, but there’s no desperation or anger left in his voice, only bone-deep exhaustion. “Please.”

“No,” Jon says. “Tell me” – and the static is so loud, now, when he does this – “how do you feel about me?”

He doesn’t have to ask it to know. Martin gasps out a shuddering sob. “I love you. You’re the most important person in my life. You’re –”

– 

And Martin’s _everything._ He always has been. 

–

“This could be ours,” Jon says, quiet. 

The landscape before them is devoid of anything resembling life. Rock and stone and gravel and mud and what used to be houses. Somewhere in the distance the wind howls like a dying man. Or maybe it is a dying man. Jon could find out, he supposes, but it’s more fun this way. Not _fun_. More interesting. Some of his eyes open and then close again. There’s something out there he wants to see. He’s too far away. He doesn’t want to get closer.

“I don’t want it,” Martin says. 

Jon knows he’s lying, and he knows Martin does too. Jon nestles in closer, and Martin wraps his arm around his shoulders. It’s a warm, heavy weight, a pressure point, and Jon sighs and kisses Martin’s neck. He’s warm right there. Martin turns a little bit so he can look at Jon’s face. He opens his mouth just a little bit, bares his teeth, almost like he’s preparing to sink them into Jon’s face. 

They sit there like that for a moment, Martin’s teeth and Jon’s sharp eyes and all of these warm, soft, yielding hands. Jon thinks about his full-tooth smile. How it makes him look so much younger than he is. He never smiles like that anymore. Guess there’s not much to smile about, now.

Martin closes his mouth. He always does.

“I don’t want it either,” Jon says. They both know that that, too, is a lie. 

–

“Please,” Martin whispers into the fabric of Jon’s trousers. It doesn’t sound like he has much faith in his prayers anymore. Jon hates to be his malevolent god. 

“You know I’m not going to kill you,” he says. 

“I know,” Martin says, and he sounds so sad and defeated that for a moment Jon thinks he would do anything for him that he asked for. Anything at all.

–

Guess it’s like it was, back then, when he’d asked Martin to run away with him, when Martin had accused him of only going to him to get him to say no. 

Martin knowing what he should want. Coming on his hands and knees begging for it, because he knows Jon won’t give it to him, no matter how he cries. 

–

Would it really be that bad, he wonders, to become what they want him to be? To see and know and finally feel satisfied and full again? 

He knows there’s something more out there. Martin does, too. Why else would he sit by the window? Why else would he open his mouth like that? Why else would he bite at his own wrist until he bleeds? 

–

Elias had told him it wasn’t in his _fate_. Jon wonders if that was supposed to be good or bad. Had Elias tried to hurt him with it? Had he thought it’d make all this worse? That all this was senseless and pointless and completely random? Probably. The more he thinks about it the more he realizes it just makes this sweeter. Nothing inherent to his being. Just the exhilarating pleasure of endless becoming at the hands of someone else until he’s strong enough to break free. Finally bite the hand that fed him until he became something too big and powerful to hold anymore. 

From unremarkable to something else. Something more. Isn’t that what everyone wants? Isn’t that what he’d wanted? To become something big enough for people to finally like?

–

He’s starting to think maybe being liked isn’t all that important. Maybe the important part was everything else. Being liked was just what he thought he needed to want for the enormity of his desire to be okay.

–

But Martin still kisses him so sweetly, even if now they have to watch out for his teeth and Jon’s eyes (because they’re everywhere now, and it’s so much better now, because he can watch Martin from every angle when they kiss, his fingers twitching, his breaths moving his ribs, the fluttering of his eyelids) so that Martin doesn’t put his hands over them or poke fingers into them, except sometimes Jon’s lip catches on his teeth anyway and when it does Martin’s breath hitches and then he pulls away, and doesn’t want to kiss him again for a long time. 

–

He always wants Martin to like him. Oh the things he would do to keep him safe; how he would bleed himself dry or crucify himself on the cross of his endless knowledge, how he would kill and die for him. How he would carry him across fire. How he would crawl on his hands and knees.

Martin still looks at Jon like he’s everything. Jon hopes he’s enough. 

–

And every time he asks Martin he says the same thing. 

“Tell me,” Jon exhales, and the static barely crackles. 

“I love you,” Martin says without hesitation. “You’re the only thing. You’re all that matters.”

–

They could have it all. All of it. It could all be theirs. 

–

Martin’s teeth click together like a spider. Skittering legs. Venom filled fangs. Jon bares his throat and watches as Martin swallows and swallows and swallows. 

–

“You couldn’t hurt me,” Jon says, quiet. Martin’s watching him. Those slit pupil eyes. Those pale yellow eyes. Jon feels dizzy with desire. 

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Martin says, barely above a whisper himself. It seems nonsensical after what Jon’d just said, but Jon understands what he actually means –

He means _If this wasn’t our current reality it’d hurt you. If I did it to anyone else I’d hurt them. If I do this I will be a monster, and I can’t handle it, and I can’t let myself, and I can pretend I’m okay just as long as I don’t admit anything to myself, or to you._ He means _I know you mean if I do it it won’t hurt you but I’m choosing to think you mean I am physically incapable of doing anything that might hurt you. I want to be good. I want to be worthy. I want to be someone or something that won’t hurt others. I want to be good. I want to be good. It’s all I have. It’s what I’ve built myself around._

Jon doesn’t even have to pull it out of him or give him the merciful release of compulsion to let him say it. It’s like a physical thing that Jon can just catch directly from the air. Like something alive and living. A fly or a mosquito or a bee. A beautiful dragonfly. One of those colorful moths. 

“You wouldn’t,” he says anyway. He’d taken a knife to his own body earlier just to prove it. Where he’d sunk the knife handle deep into his side there’s only a fading scar now. Martin had watched the blood trickle out with shaking hands but he hadn’t cried. 

“I won’t,” Martin says, and that’s that for the moment. 

–

Jon wonders if Elias is coming back for him. He sends him tapes when he least expects it, and hearing Tim and Sasha should make him cry but as it is it just vaguely sparks some hidden, unknown feeling within him that he no longer recognizes as anything specific. 

–

Maybe that’s why Elias does it, he realizes. To see if he’s still weak enough to care. He wonders about fighting back, then, for a moment. He wonders if that’s why Martin still just watches him with his hungry eyes instead of doing anything about it. He wonders if that’s why he, himself, still just watches out the window with his eyes moving like ants across his skin instead of pulling out the nails from the door and seeing everything for himself in all its horrifying, excruciating glory and bleak detail. 

–

And it feels so good to imagine it all – the fear. The suffering. Knowing that out of all the people out there he’s safe. That whatever’s out there respects and loves him enough to not hurt him. That Martin’s safe now as well, that he no longer has to fight what loves him. That Martin’s made himself bulletproof. Maybe him escaping had been a blessing in disguise all along. 

–

His skin feels like soft marble when Jon traces his fingertips over it in little circles. Martin sighs and shudders and trembles when Jon touches his fingers to his lips, light and gentle. His mouth opens just a bit. His teeth are shiny. Jon wonders what they’d feel in his arm, or his neck, or his wrist. 

He bets it’d feel like home. He bet it’d feel just as good as basking in the bright, loving light of everything in the world loving him enough to leave him alone. He holds Martin’s head in his hands and Martin closes his eyes. His breath goes shallow in his throat and Jon kisses the top of his head, sweet, gentle. 

–

“I love you,” Martin says quietly. “I won’t do it.”

“I love you too,” Jon says. His fingers don’t still where they’re tracing little drawings of love and devotion on Martin’s face. “That’s why I want you to.”

Martin looks away. The shape of his jaw has gotten too sharp for Jon’s liking. “Martin,” he says. “Look at me.”

There’s no compulsion in his voice but Martin turns his head to face him like he’d physically made him do it anyway. “I don’t want to,” he says, but his voice is weak. 

“Please,” Jon says. “Please.”

He wants it so badly, suddenly – not just to know what it’d feel like to have his teeth in his body, but to know he’s finally useful to Martin. To make him see how good it feels. To feed him. To make him see the world for what it really is; something good and perfect and full of _fear_. Full of things to love. Gentle in the abundance of it. This feeling of knowing that no matter how hungry he is there will always be enough out there to sate him. Enough to fill himself to the brim with.

“No,” Martin says. “You’re the only thing.”

 _The only thing that still matters. The only thing that still exists. The only thing I love. The only thing, because you are no longer a who but a what._ Michael had said that, before. Helen had said that, before. Had Elias said that? It doesn’t matter anymore. 

Something, or someone, or someplace. Jon is a place of worship, now. He wants to make Martin into one as well.

–

The day Martin finally breaks is a crowning day. Jon fantasizes about building a throne for him. There’s nothing in the cabin to use except for his own body. He thinks about folding himself into the shape of something good and gilded and sharp and bloodied. Gold and silver for the new king of a ruined world.

He sinks his teeth into Jon’s wrist, and he does not stop to think until he’s already in him to the root. His mouth is sweet and soft and wet and Jon shudders and shives as the sharp tips of his teeth touch through his wrist. Jon’s free hand finds its way into Martin’s hair at the base of his skull. He wants him to stay right there forever.

He’s delirious from the blood loss by the time Martin detaches himself from his wrist. There’s blood all over his face. He’s beautiful and perfect and Jon wants so badly to kiss him, so he asks. “Kiss me. Please.”

Martin’s breath comes out ragged and thready but he surges forward anyway, and their teeth clunk together for just a second and then Martin puts a hand on Jon’s jaw and his mouth falls open underneath it to make room for Martin in his mouth. He tastes like blood. He tastes sweet. Jon can’t get enough of him. 

–

At the window Martin nestles into his side and cries. 

“What’s wrong?” Jon asks, because he’s important, and his feelings are important, and his tears are important.

“Don’t worry,” Martin sniffles, and then he presses his face into Jon’s shoulder. “I’m okay.”

“Does it feel overwhelming?” Jon asks. It had, for him. He imagines all the blood in the world and wonders what it feels like for Martin. Drying in knee deep puddles on the ground. In the drying ponds and rivers and lakes. In still living bodies. Everywhere. 

Martin nods slowly. “There’s so much.”

“And you want it.”

Martin pulls away and takes a deep shuddering breath. When he opens his mouth to talk his teeth look too big for his mouth. “I want all of it.”

–

(“Martin,” Jon says. “Martin. Hey, hey. Are you okay?”

There’s blood. There’s blood everywhere. On Martin. On the ground underneath him. It’s a pool of dark red everywhere around him. His clothes are getting wet from it. Soggy and heavy.

“Martin,” Jon exhales. He kneels down, and his legs are shaking so badly he has to sit, and as soon as his hands touch Martin’s face he knows. “Get up,” he says anyway, and grabs a hold of his shirt collar. The other hand finds its way under Martin’s neck. “Get up, please,” he says.

Martin doesn’t get up. Jon leans down, forehead to forehead, and sobs, and knows, and wishes he didn’t.) 

–

It’s beautiful outside. It’s bright, and lovely, and it smells so good. Jon can’t understand why they didn’t go earlier. 

“Isn’t it beautiful?” he asks. Martin squeezes his hand, firm and present. Jon leans to his side to kiss Martin on his temple. He’s cold but soft under his lips. He’s shaking just slightly. It probably feels like too much. He will get used to it, Jon knows. He always gets used to things. 

–

“Do you hear them?” Martin asks. “Do you hear their blood?”

Jon doesn’t. He hears the screams. He hears the tears. It’s almost the same. “Yes,” he says. “I hear them.”

Martin leans against him. “Thank you,” he says. Around them the wail of the wind becomes something beautiful and pure.

Jon thinks he knows what he means. If he strains he can pick up the lingering traces of a thousand thoughts that he hadn’t said out loud. 

_Thank you for not killing me. Thank you for making me see. Thank you for being you. Thank you for showing me what I can be, and what I am, and what I can become, and how I can be what you need me to be. Thank you for this. I forgive you. I love you. Thank you. Thank you._

“I love you,” Jon says. He holds out his hand wordlessly. On his wrist the last of Martin’s tooth marks are still fading. Martin grabs his hand with one hand to hold it in place and sinks his teeth in gratefully, and Jon hears his blood sing all the way from his veins and into Martin’s soft, perfect mouth. 

He thinks if anything will ever destroy him it will be love. He hopes it’s love. 

–

The world is still again. Jon lies on the cold ground and stares up at the eye. It looks back at him, unblinking and all seeing and eternally knowing. Martin leans against him heavily with his eyes closed. His mouth is stained red. He’s beautiful and Jon loves him so much he thinks his heart might pop. 

Out here it’s just the three of them. Jon and Martin and the endless, beautiful hunger for something more. Inside Martin the thrum of Jon’s blood. Inside Jon the thrum of everything Martin ever has been and will ever be. Just like it was supposed to be. Just like it will always be. 

–

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Martin says, but the words come out empty and unconvincing. He’s already salivating. Jon is so, so proud of him, and for a second he has an unpleasant vision of Elias in his head. _I’m so proud of you. You’re ready. You’re lovely and strong and just what you should be. I made you and you’re perfect._

Jon holds out his wrist. It’s bloody. His wounds no longer heal as fast as they used to, but it’s alright. He can’t die. He’s dizzy but it’s okay. “You won’t,” he says. His words come out a little slurred. 

It’s all Martin needs. His teeth still feel like home when they sink down, down, down, just like Jon had thought they would.

**Author's Note:**

> im on tumblr at blqckwoods !


End file.
